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minalp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 21, 2020
1
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I have been a big fan of an apple. I bought a brand new Macbook air (i5/8GB/128GB/13.3"/MacOS Sierra) in the end of November 2017. It was a big money for me and I bought it from my savings thinking that apple products wouldn’t fail like others; I was expecting it to last for at least 6 years given the reputation of apple reputation.

It worked fine apart from its fan being noisy sometimes until mid of April 2020. When lock-down in our country was imposed, while working from home on 17th April 2020 in the evening hours, it just went off. When I tried to turn it on it would get stuck at login screen. I googled it and tried many things like SMC reset, PRAM reset, reinstalling the OS and even took help from Apple support guys. I worked with them for 15 days on fixing my macbook air but nothing worked.

So when the lockdown was lifted a bit I took the machine to one of the authorized Apple store for diagnostic. They tried on their own but then sent it to authorized service centre in Bangalore, India. In couple of days they said that the logic board is dead. I mean how this is even possible that a logic board blows up randomly or rather due to poor engineering. Is this is quality of products that Apple has come to accept? You would think that they would admit to screwing up, and offer to foot the bill for repairing the machine.

Has anyone else had a similar issue with Apple? I'm at a loss here, as I'm worried the laptop will just end up blowing another logic board if I pay to repair it, as this seems to be a major design error. I am incredibly disappointed with the quality of products Apple is selling, and the customer service is just awful. I don't think I will be purchasing any Apple products in the future.
 
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Apple doesn't repair boards, only replace. I suggest you get a second opinion from a reputable repair shop that can do component repair. It will likely be a lot less expensive.

Hope you also did some debugging on your own. The MBA is pretty easy to work on, at the very least try booting with the logic board only (remove wifi, ssd etc).
 
Given your purchase date, you should have valid AppleCare... make a claim with that. If you don't then too bad. This is a perfect example of why to get it. Every Mac I have owned I have had AppleCare and every time it has paid for itself, over and over again.
 
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Given your purchase date, you should have valid AppleCare... make a claim with that. If you don't then too bad. This is a perfect example of why to get it. Every Mac I have owned I have had AppleCare and every time it has paid for itself, over and over again.
Are you referring to AppleCare or AppleCare+. Regular AppleCare is the standard warranty the comes with an Apple product.
 
I am sorry for your loss... but that's the reality of any electronics. sometimes bad things happen. its why they offer extended warranties (as well as to make some money). its not bad engineering or millions would be dying at the same time. Could they have made it even perhaps a bit more bullet proof? sure. at a huge cost. sometimes the last 10% costs 90%. reality of commercial design.
 
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In many countries Applecare+ for Macs is not available; only the AppleCare Protection Plan is offered.
The OP is in India and the standard warranty is 1 year with an option to buy an extended warranty: https://www.apple.com/in/legal/warranty/products/embedded-mac-warranty-row.html

I always purchase the extended warranties for my Apple products. Too pricey to fix without the extended coverage.

I'm now looking at a new Air with an education discount and free AirPods.
 
Hi happened with me and one of my friends too. It’s A mid 2017, 1466 model. It happened after I updated Catalina. My personal feeling is it was unable to handle video conferences and therefore motherboard crashed. I have started a post on this giving all details.
 
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